LED Softbox Test

[Note: This is being published as a “work in progress”, so I will be adding photos, framegrabs and video clips over the next few days, as I have time]

I heard about a new make of LED softboxes which seem to be being used by some photographers and though it would be good to test them and see if they live up to their claims. I contacted the distributors and was sent 2 to test. In addition I asked for dimmable transformers.

I tested them with both a stills camera (the Canon 5D Mark II) and a video camera (Red Epic).

Size and Packaging

Each panel comes well protected in a thick cardboard box with foam corner protection and a foam front panel protector. The size of the packaging is 66cm x 63cm x 5.5cm.

The panel itself is very thin (about half the width of a £1 coin) and measures 595 x 595mm square

The only connector is a socket into which you plug the transformer. You can either use a fixed brightness transformer (supplied with the unit) or buy a dimmable transformer (as shown here)

Colour Temperature

The box and specs claim they are 4500K. However in testing they turned out to be closer to 4100K.

Intensity

I took a series of photos with the light at 2m, 1m and 0.5m from the subject (a black/white/grey card). The ISO was set to 800, the aperture was f/2.8.